Best practices when creating Footage submissions
Updated August 2024
Increase the chances of your content being found by following our submission guidelines.
We're doing our best to make sure each submission's data is as accurate as possible, in order to give our users the best experience. Each field is related to the capabilities of our users to filter and/or search for what they're looking for, and receive the most relevant results.
The data allows your asset to be shown when its most relevant, which increases the chances of it to be used.
In this article, we will go over important guidelines for each part of the submission flow:
Titles
Titles should catch the essence of your work in the most simple way. They are limited to 40 characters and must be descriptive and relevant to the footage:
Titles become the URL - make sure you choose a proper title
Every word should be capitalized in the titles
As a rule, avoid using terms for ethnicity (race) and religion in titles and descriptions. Instead, titles and descriptions can focus on the occupation, clothing, location, or actions of people (e.g., a woman in a hijab; a man at a mosque; a diverse business team; a bricklayer on a building site)
Avoid using adjectives or descriptive words such as beautiful, cheerful etc.
Tags
There are up to 20 tag slots. Make sure to prioritize the most important tags first, and always include any location information in the tags and description if applicable.
Tags are not visible to customers, so make sure the most important ones are in the description as well.
Please do not use repeating tags or tags with the same root. For example, don't use: run, runs, running - but only use run.
Try to use wide range of words that are related to your work. For example instead of Nature, describe using specific words like Meadow, Field or Woods, Forest.
Try not to use adjectives or descriptive words such as beautiful, cheerful, attractive, and successful. These are less likely to be searched by customers.
Avoid using terms that objectify the model, such as attractive, sexy, beautiful, sensual, or erotic, unless it’s relevant to the shot.
Subcategories
When submitting an asset, one to three subcategory needs to be picked. These will add your assets to the equivalent filter on the front end, and also will appear beneath the image under "item tags".
Here is our Subcategories list that is currently available for Footage:
Aerial - Clips showing an area from an elevated vantage point, from a drone, or an aircraft
Animals - clips in which the main focus would be insects or animals, whether they are in a wild environment, on a farm, or domesticated pets in a human environment.
Animation - Clips that integrate real footage with CGI elements or hyper-realistic animation clips
Backgrounds - Clips without a primary focus. The background may have a lot of white space, copy space, bokeh, and depth of field to support text or graphics.
Buildings - The primary focus of the clip is a man-made structure, such as a building, bridge, or monument, including close-ups of architectural details or the process of building a structure.
Business - People in an office or workshop environment. Business or profession-related visual elements
Education - The focus in the clip is on all aspects of knowledge and teaching. It can be formal and informal studies, teachers, school kids, and students. Educational institutions such as schools, classrooms, or any other place, private lessons, one-on-one, at home, at a studio, etc. Visual elements that illustrate the subject can be as background.
Fashion - The focus of the clip will be people representing clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body posture, often inspired by culture and art in a particular place and time. The category will also include elements from the world of fashion consumption, design, and the fashion industry.
Food - Clips of food and drinks. Actions and elements related to food and drink preparations. Food culture, restaurants, agriculture, or objects which are related to food and drinks.
Green Screen & Overlay - Clips that show actual green (or blue) pixels used for chroma keying, include an embedded transparent alpha channel (ProRes 4444), or, show objects isolated on pure black.
Health - Clips of all aspects of healthcare, medical facilities (hospitals, clinics, labs), medical elements, and objects. Medical professionals and people in need of medical or healthcare services or mental therapy.
Holidays - The focus in the clip is a specific holiday in the calendar year, such as Christmas, Hanukkah, personal events like weddings, birthdays, and corporate holidays such as Black Friday. Include people, places, or objects related to the celebration.
Household - Clips in which the focus is on homes. It can be an indoor or outdoor shot, showing people and daily household tasks, gardening, yard work, garage, etc.
Industrial - The dominant focus is elements of industry and mass production of products using different machines inside factories or on job sites. Small production drives the economy but is not a hobby. The focus is more on the manufacturing process, location, and equipment and less on the people working in the industry.
Nature - Clips in which the focus is wild clean, and mostly untouched nature. It will include nature reserves and various landscape formations on land and at seas - such as beaches, plants, mountains, hills, forests, lakes, and islands without or with hardly any settlements or people.
People - The main focus of the clip is people. Diversity of people, portraits, ethnic groups, genders, and activities. It also includes close-up clips the main dominance is body parts.
Science - The focus of the clips can be on biological science, physical science, natural phenomena, and content related to chemicals/drugs, living things, and planets.
Sports - The clips focus on sports and fitness activities or different aspects that are connected to them. Competitive physical activity or game that requires physical abilities or skills can be included in the category. It can be as professional activity or as leisure.
Technology - Clips related to computers, phones, electrical appliances, or any other wired or wireless technology, screens, programming code, or other tech-related concepts such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
Transportation - The focus in the clip is any transfer of people or goods transported by any vehicle from place to place across the land, air, and sea.
Travel - Actions related to travel and excursions such as boarding a plane, packing luggage, setting up a tent, taking photos, hiking, and more, popular or special locations around the world, iconic sites, and vacations.
Technical - Resolution, Compression & File types
Resolution:
Files should be a minimum of 1920x1080 px, free of noise and artifacts. 4K resolution or higher is preferred.The proper resolution should be picked from a drop-down list when submitting an asset. We are not accepting assets with a resolution that does not match those appearing on the drop-down list.
Quicktime formats such as Prores 422, Prores 4444, and Animation are accepted (not accepted: PNG Quicktime, JPG (JPEG) Quicktime, or similar).
ProRes codecs are preferred instead of H.264 submissions.
Here is the list of accepted resolutions & compressions.
Compression:
Please ensure the video compression match your choice from the drop-down menu.
The proper compression should be picked from a drop-down list when submitting an asset. We are not accepting assets with a compressions that does not match those appearing on the drop-down list.
Here is the list of accepted resolutions & compressions.
File Type
Video Preview: You do not need to include a watermark in the preview video. Video watermarks are generated automatically by our system.
Single Clip: We only accept one clip per submission. No packs, compilations, collages, or montages.
Accepted Formats: Individual assets can be uploaded as a .mov or .mp4 file.
Editorial Use
Assets that can’t be used by our users for commercial use should be marked as editorial. These are assets the contains, but not limited to - footage with visible brand or product logos, recognizable places which require property release, objects or people without proper release. We recommend to check prior to your submissions of such items if these should be classified as editorial.
Model & Property Releases
Footage featuring an identifiable person that is submitted for commercial use must be accompanied by a valid Adult or Minor model release. Similarly, footage taken on private or recognizable places, protected objects which require property release must be submitted with a property release signed by the owner if they are to be used commercially. Model & property releases may be needed in additional occasions.
Model release forms should not be included in the download package, but rather should be uploaded separately during the video submission process.
Model Release file names can't have hyphens, underscores, dashes, spaces or special characters such as &, å, ñ, é, ß, ®, ©, §, ç, ä, ø, ü, quote marks (“ ” or ‘ ’), or commas (,) - as we won’t be able to open them. Please use names like ModelShoot0070.
Model Releases - Any content featuring an identifiable person must be accompanied by a model release. Submissions depicting a minor must be accompanied by a model release that was signed by that minor's parent or legal guardian. If there is no model release for the content, it may be submitted for Editorial use only.
Property Releases - Any content clearly depicting private, recognizable or protected objects or property must be accompanied by a completed release from the property owner.
Some additional guides:
Resolution & Compression Accepted:
Compression:
Animation + Alpha
H.264
H.265
ProRes422
Prores4444
Resolution
1080x1080 1080x1920 1920x1080 2048x1080 2048x1152 2048x1556 2048x864 2160x3840 2304x4096 2688x1512 2704x1520 3840x2160 4096x1440 4096x1534 4096x1712 4096x1720 4096x1728 4096x1740 4096x1920 4096x2048 4096x2106 4096x2160 4096x2304 4450x2503 4608x2160 4608x2492 4800x2700 5120x2880 5120x4800 5568x3132 7680x4320 8192x3456 | square vertical HD HD 2k 2k 2k 2k vertical 4k vertical 4k 2k 2.7k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 4k 5k 5k 5k 6k 8k 8k |